the seasoned tobacco pipe

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dropped things out of her left hand unless she kept lookingat the object. She was unable to distinguish between apenny and a ball of worsted. A very interesting phenomenonwas observed at this stage-viz., occasional sudden pallorof the left arm and hand, apparently due to arterial spasm.During the period ofpallor the lett radial pulse becamedistinctly smaller and harder than the right. As the patientwas losing ground rather rapidly an operation was decidedon. The right inferior parietal lobule was adjudged to be

the seat of the lesion, mainly because of the profoundastereognosis, the most marked of the focal symptoms, and.at the operation, on the dura being opened, that area of thecortex was at once seen to be occupied by a greyish,œdematous, fragile tumour about the size of a large walnut.’On microscopical examination it turned out to be a glioma.It appeared to infiltrate the surrounding brain by an indefinite,margin, and it was found to dip into the substance of thebrain to the extent of 1½ inches. It was removed completelytogether with about a half-inch margin of apparentlyhealthy tissue round. Recovery was rather eventful, butfinally excellent ; one and a half years after the operation thepatient’s general physical condition was as good as it everhad been. No difference in the power of the two arms couldbe detected by the dynamometer. The left hand, however,was constantly colder than the right, and obvious spasmodicpallor was still occasionally noticeable. From the scientific

point of view the most interesting feature of the conditionwas the persistent and complete astereognosis, althoughsensibility otherwise was perfect, with the solitary exceptionof very slight impairment of touch in the left finger-tips.The patient could not even distinguish between roundand square, hard and soft, and yet sensibility otherwisewas all but normal. Muscular sense was found to be

entirely unimpaired after the operation. The localisingvalue of astereognosis as a symptom of the post-parietalregion-that is, of the superior and inferior parietallobules-is strikingly confirmed by such a case as this, andthe contentions of the American writers, more particularlyMills and Weisenburg, are amply supported. It is worth

noting from the surgical point of view that the recoveryseems complete, except, of course, for the residual pheno.mena, 18 months after the operation, although the tumourwas an infiltrating glioma.

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THE SEASONED TOBACCO PIPE.

THE wife (depicted, we think, some years ago by Punoh)who thought to delight her husband by throwing away allhis dirty old tobacco-pipes and replacing them by a cleannew one was, it is highly probable, doing him after

all a good turn. Most smokers of the pipe admit that apipe is not agreeable to smoke until it has been well seasoned’by several’’ smokes," and hence the well-burnt, dark-coloured,oil-laden pipe is, as a rule, a highly cherished accessory tothe tobacco habit. It would appear to be clearly demon-strated, however, in an interesting article by Dr. J. D. Reckittcontributed to our columns this week, that the seasoned pipemay be poisonously saturated with oils, be these nicotine,pyridin, or other toxic substances which the chemist hasdetected from time to time in the condensed products oftobacco smoke. Dr. Reckitt was puzzled for some time aboutthe cause of the breathlessness of a patient, the symptomhaving been suffered for some considerable time. The con-dition was aggravated on going upstairs or on hurried walk-ing. The patient could not draw a complete or comfortablebreath, and in spite of a robust and healthy appearance thedyspnoea persisted and caused some anxiety. At lengthan old "friend" " was suspected as the cause of the troublein the shape of a very dark-coloured briar whichhe had smoked on and off for ten years, while the

tobacco he affected was described as a powerful brand.The suspicion seemed well founded, for on discarding thehighly seasoned pipe an improvement in the condition of thepatient soon set in. He expressed himself much better,there was little or no breathlessness even when goingupstairs, and he himself was convinced that the troublehad been caused by smoking a foul pipe. Finally, withina few months of abandoning the foul pipe he reportedhimself as practically quite well and enjoying life, freedas he was from the distressing dyspnœa from which hehad suffered for so many years. Though he felt boundto give up his pipe he consoled his tobacco hunger witha dozen Turkish cigarettes daily, which did not appearto do him any harm. The case is of interest, inasmuchas the seasoned pipe is preferred by most smokers becauseit gives a cool, unirritating, good-flwoured smoke, and yet

in spite of these qualities the probability is that suchsmoke is stored with a larger amount of toxic substance. It

is well known, of course, that tobacco juice expressed ordistilled by heat developed in the usual method of smokingis very poisonous. There is the example of a drunken studentwho was given a dram to drink into which his fellows hadpoured the juice from their pipes. The result was fatal.

Then, again, children have been poisoned after using an oldtobacco pipe for blowing soap bubbles. In all cases one ofthe prominent symptoms is difficult breathing.

THE TREATMENT OF LEPROSY.

THERE is at present no known cure for leprosy, and theresults of treatment of the disease by drugs remain unsatis-factory. The prognosis is therefore a gloomy one for theleper. It i true that now and again some encouragingimprovement has been reported following the employment ofsome special mode of treatment, and for a time at least thep-ogress of the malady in certain instances has appeared tobe checked. On the other hand, it is admitted that occasion-ally the disease without any treatment at all seems to come

to a standstill, and therefore it is not easy to say, in the

circumstances, whether temporary improvement is due to theaction of the remedy or arises from some spontaneous checkindependent of drugs. For some years numerous remedieshave been tried and found wanting, including, among others,mercury, arsenic, creasote, salicylic acid, chaulmoogra oil,gurjon oil, leprol, ichthyol, iodine, iodoform, nastin B,experimental sera, and X rays. In some cases treated in the

early stages the X rays appeared to do good, but the use of thismethod of treatment has its limitations. For alleviation of

symptoms chaulmoogra oil remains a favourite remedy, thoughit cannot be regarded as a cure for the malady. For manyyears no one succeeded in cultivating the bacillus lepras out-side the human body, and it was thought that if this couldbe done it would then be possible to prepare a vaccine whichwould prove a specific for leprosy. Last year it was

announced almost simultaneously that in America Dr. C.

Duval, and in this country Dr. F. W. Twort, had been ableto cultivate the bacillus of leprosy on artificial media. There

is some ground for believing that a similar discovery wasmade by Dr. Moses T. Clegg working on independent linesin the biological laboratory of the Bureau of Science,Manila. In a recent number of the Philippine Journal ofScience there appears a paper by Surgeon-Major Eugene R.Whitmore, of the United States Army Medical Corps, andDr. Clegg, in which is given the result of experiments in thetreatment of leprosy by a vaccine and by other remedies. Dr.

Clegg, it appears, had succeeded in cultivating an acid-fastbacillus from the spleen and nodules on the ear of leperpatients. His procedure was to secure an amoeba and abacillus growing well in symbiosis and then inoculate theleprous tissue with this culture. The acid-fast bacillus was